Digitalisation in Fashion and Luxury: How it is Influencing Millennials' Purchasing Behaviour in Italy

Abstract

Buy every product, anywhere, at any time is what consumer expect today; this is becoming the main challenge of numerous brands. In latest years, analysis of consumer decision making processes highlighted the abandonment of the traditional and linear model while illustrating the development of a more efficient and effective complex processes to clearly represent the customer journey. The increasing diffusion and use of smartphones, tablets and computers is one of the main reasons why these expectations are augmented, in the last decade. Shopping has now no boundaries, it is global. Information can be accessed in any location, in different ways and through different channels. The era in which we are living can be defined as an era of digital transformation. Even luxury brands are now needed to implement technology and digital in every aspect of their businesses. Digital is transforming how businesses are made, but it also influences numerous human aspects such as cultures way of life and so on. Luxury brands need to embrace digital in order to survive and stay competitive. The experience lived by the customer is what defines its perception, and loyalty, of a specific brand. Consumer experience refers not only to the moment of the final purchase but to the entire process approach, from the very first moment of visiting the brand’s website until the post-purchase evaluation. This research focuses on investigating these aspects; the aim is to understand how the digitalization era, in which we are living, is influencing the purchasing decision journey of individuals. In this paper is present a specific focus on the Italian market and on the millennial generation. In order to study this phenomenon, an inductive approach is used; this means that, after having gathered relevant and sufficient information, deductions explaining this specific phenomenon will be drawn. Information, about how Italian millennials behave when buying luxury products, will be gathered from a structured questionnaire that will be proposed online to respondents; these results will be compared with information about millennials in general that buy luxury products. This project provides, to the reader, insights about digitalization and how it has changed the behaviour of Italian millennials when buying luxury products. From the analysis conducted, results show that Italian millennials are attracted from the same factors and have similar preferences compared to those of millennials in general; regarding the digital environment, it resulted that Italian millennials are well digitally oriented but are adapting to it at a slower pace than millennials globally.